Is Canada up to snuff on gender equity? Are men oppressed? GOP Drifting Further from Women.

Editors and the gender gap Washington Post (blog) …The current editorial team of the American Political Science Review, of which I am a member, takes that responsibility quite seriously. This means we endeavor to make sure that all papers are evaluated by panels of reviewers with expertise in the area of inquiry and the methods employed, and that we ask women to participate in the review process in a systematic and deliberate manner. Although it is unclear whether the presence of women as reviewers influences the outcome of the review process in any specific way, we believe that it is important that women have a voice in the review process. It is also our hope that, as more women are asked to review, that they will consider submitting their own work (if they have not previously done so).

The editorial team’s own diversity places us in a unique position to entice women and others who may have considered the Review to be “not for them,” to submit their work. After all, a greater diversity of submission is a prerequisite to a greater diversity of the journal’s content. One year into our term as editors, we were encouraged to find that the first author of 24 percent of original submissions was a woman. Although this still falls short of the proportion of APSA members who are women (32 percent), it is far better than the 17.7 percent of female first authors reported in Breuning and Sanders. And we hope that we can continue to entice more female political scientists to submit their work.

Political Report Card: Women at the Head of the Class Huffington Post (blog) With Congress at a stalemate in the budget process, it may seem like a stretch to hand out gold stars to any of our elected leaders. However, in the face of the first government shutdown since 1995, there are some leaders who are living up to the title. I’m focusing my attention on them.

From Congress to state legislatures to campaigns across the country, women are stepping up and showing their policy prowess. (And their compassion. Look to examples like U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp and Amy Klobuchar, among others, who are donating their salaries to charity during the shutdown).

Here, a short list of women making the grade…..

Is Canada up to snuff on gender equity? Vancouver Sun …Indeed, a Statistics Canada report released this Wednesday on the country’s working baby boomers confirmed the dramatic gender workplace divide.

This latest StatsCan report shows almost four out of five regularly employed baby-boom men work in the private sector. In contrast, more than one out of two baby-boom women earn their livings from governments. What are the implications of this workplace segregation for the overall wages and benefits of men and women?

Sometimes the salaries of the mostly female nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, lab technicians counsellors and teachers in the public sector are not as high as they are for men hovering at the top in private corporations.

A poster is displayed in Calgary on Monday, April 22, 2013 at the launch of the “Don’t Be THAT Guy” campaign. The campaign targets men and talks about sexual consent.

Are men oppressed? Male rights activists maligned as ‘sexists’ fight … National Post …And yet, as a series of hotly protested campus lectures in recent months has illustrated, there are real constituencies behind these extremist combatants. An ideological divide is opening up, on Canadian campuses especially, over the question of organized activism for men’s issues.

After years of campus discord over abortion, Zionism and white privilege, this new war is taking shape over the claim that men suffer systematic oppression comparable to the social inequalities that gave rise to feminism.

The GOP Is Drifting Even Further Away from Women The Atlantic Wire …In the new poll, the results for the GOP are even more ominous among young women. Only 11 percent of women younger than 50 said the party had moved closer to them. In contrast, 29 percent said the GOP had moved further away.

College-educated white women were particularly likely (45 percent) to say the Republican Party was now further from their views. That is especially significant because Republicans had made critical gains among that demographic in the 2012 election cycle. President Obama’s support among college-educated white women dropped by 6 percentage points, from 52 percent to 46 percent, between the 2008 and 2012 elections, according to national exit polls.

GOP losing ground with women, poll finds McClatchy Washington Bureau Republicans have problems wooing women. A new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll released Thursday found 14 percent of women thought the GOP had moved closer to their views. One-third said Republicans had moved further away from their views. Forty-six percent found no changes.

Off to the races: GOP still losing women NBCNews.com …Republicans continue to lose women. House Republicans may be worried about primaries in their own mostly homogenous districts, but national party leaders should be banging on their doors with this kind of polling data… “The Republican Party’s effort to rebrand itself with women since losing the 2012 presidential race and seats in Congress is falling short, a new United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll has found,” National Journal writes. “Only 14 percent of women said the Republican Party had moved closer to their perspective. More than twice as many women, 33 percent, said the party had drifted further from them. A plurality, 46 percent, saw no change. The dangers for the GOP of losing women’s support are playing out in the Virginia gubernatorial race, where Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe has taken the lead over Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, almost entirely by opening up a lead among female voters.”

Why Wendy Davis’s announcement is a big deal Washington Post (blog) When Wendy Davis announces Thursday that she is running for Texas governor, it will be a victory for women’s representation. Not because she’s likely to win. As a Democrat in a state where Republicans have monopolized statewide office since “Seinfeld” ended, she’s not.

But because the main barrier to electing more women in the United States is getting them to run in the first place, Davis’s emergence – the result of her 11-hour filibuster against an abortion bill in the state Senate in June – may be critical for encouraging other female candidates to throw their hats into the ring.

When broken down specifically by younger women, even fewer say they’ve been won over by the Republican makeover. Among women under the age of 50, just 11 percent said that the GOP had successfully moved closer to their views, while 29 percent said it’s moved further away:

America’s Women Hate the Shutdown Daily Beast Lately I’ve been talking with high-powered Republican women about the various efforts under way to address the party’s Women Problem. Some projects are focused on the grassroots, some on messaging, and some on upping the enthusiasm of ladies with the wherewithal to write big-ass checks. Republican women in the House, through the new program GROW (Growing Republican Opportunities for Women), have even begun playing in primary battles to support female candidates, a strategy generally frowned upon by party officials, who prefer to stay out of primaries. In short, hard-charging gals in the upper echelons of the GOP are excruciatingly aware of the ways their team needs to adjust in order to close its gender gap. More than one such player I spoke with has voiced exasperation along the lines of, “Our party has an issue with this.”

Published by psawomenpolitics

The UK Political Studies Association Women and Politics Specialist Group. Resource for researchers working on women and/or gender and for women in the PSA. The 2014 Specialist Group of the Year.
View all posts by psawomenpolitics